


Project 90

by ThreadbareT



Category: Joe 90 - Fandom, Stingray (UK TV), Thunderbirds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:55:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25920928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreadbareT/pseuds/ThreadbareT
Summary: Fifteen years after his TV adventures, Joe has retired as a spy, and is a 20 something Private Detective, trying to live with the after effects of the BIGRAT processing.When he is hired to escort a pair of fugitives to their safe house, he discovers that the technology of Project 90 have been put back into use, for a nefarious plot.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Project 90

ONE  
I sat in the rental car, trying to quiet the babbling at the back of my head.  
The motel was a cheap and nasty place on the outskirts of the city. Compact rooms were stacked twelve floors high, in a big concrete block, and all of it fading into disrepair, with flickering lights, peeling paint, scuff marks and graffiti.  
The babble in my brain got louder, as the ghosts grew restless.  
“Okay!” I tapped the rim of my glasses, to scroll through the software options. “What do you guys think?”  
The babble in my head blurred into focus, the incoherent choir becoming a single voice. That of Lieutenant Colonel ‘Bean’ Garrow.   
Garrow sat beside me, a spectral, insubstantial, figment of my imagination, looking more or less as he had at the height of his career, when The Orphanage recorded his cerebral impulse pattern, a gruff, sandy haired Yorkshire man, with a bulky physique and flattened face. “Eighth floor, third window in from the vending machines. The curtains are drawn, to stop anybody looking in, but ajar, so somebody can look out, keeping watch.” He stroked his chin. “I count two shadows moving past the window, but they ordered take away for three.”  
The babble flexed, with a sound like a needle dragging on a record. The memory of Miss Tsuki was lean and sinewy, her dark hair cut short on the back and sides, the top swept into a quiff, her neck and shoulders covered in tattoos. “They were brandishing shotguns when they took her. The wrong weapon for the job, which suggests they are the only weapons they have. The bad news is, in a tiny room like that, they could cut you in half. On the other hand, if they are smart, they will be wary of catching their own side in the blast.” She paused. “That’s a big If.”  
Another needle scratch.  
This time the babble formed… her.  
I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see Juliet. I could still feel her beside me, and smell her shampoo. It was like peaches and marshmallows.  
“Hey,” she whispered. “Did you take your meds today?”  
“I’ve been busy,” I sighed.  
“Oh?” She chided me. “Take them. And are you warm enough? Do you need a sweater?”  
“I’m fine,” I assured her, digging my pill bottle out of my pocket.  
“Right,” she sighed, unconvinced. “Sure, you are.”  
“I’m fine!” I snapped.  
The ghost of Juliet chuckled. “Okay. I really like the American accent. What is that? Mid-Western? Are you… Is that Clint Eastwood?”  
I concentrated real hard, on pushing her back down under the surface.  
“That,” Juliet said, with a giggle, “is adorable.”  
I opened my eyes.  
The ghosts were gone, reduced back down into the unquiet and incoherent babble at the back of my head.  
Wearily, I snapped open my pill bottle, and myself to swallow a couple of the capsules within. I dropped the bottle in my pocket, and checked the Snoop-ware suite.  
Pretty much every room with light on had at least one device drawing on the complimentary wi-fi. Mostly phones, but some laptop computers. About a third of them were taking some well advised precautions and logging on through a VPN, which would be more than enough to protect them from your average common or garden criminal: your identity thief, nosey parker, or malware merchant.  
One of the rooms on the eighth floor, the one a few doors in from the stairs and the vending machines, was layered behind some good quality, black market defences. Which was suspicious. It took a few moments to break pass the defences, and spool through their data, but… then I stumbled onto the web of fake social media accounts, and knew they were my target.  
A couple of nights ago, Wndy Walker, the seventeen year old daughter of a US Senator was snatched from a nightclub. She’d given her security detail the slip, because it was spring break, and she was hoping to misbehave.  
The bad guys found her first, using an old, but effective trick. They used some phantom accounts to spread her yearbook photo around the internet, with a fake name, and a fictional sob story about how she had gone missing, and her ‘parents’ were really worried to find her. It’s the kind of post a lot of people share, because they want to do the right thing, even if it isn’t from a respectable police force, and could be from her real parents, or could be from a stalker, an ex with a grudge, or, in this case, some dangerous criminals hoping to extort a ransom from her mother.  
Apparently, there was some kind of iffy land deal, it went wrong, and the wrong people didn’t want to lost their money.  
I have no idea what the deal was, but seeing as the Senator engaged my services, rather than go to the Police, or the FBI, I think it is reasonable to assume it was pretty damned dodgy.  
I reached over to the back seats of my car, and lifted over my briefcase. I clicked open the concealed compartment and took out the short, blunt nosed pistol, clicked on the wasp-sting silencer, loaded a fresh magazine, and tucked the gun under my jacket.  
Outside the car, the night was uncomfortably hot, in the sticky, itchy, muggy kind of way you get the Southern states. I strolled casually across the parking lot to the stairwell. I ignored the elevator, and took the stairs, hurrying up to the eighth floor.  
Pressing myself against the wall, I peeped out at the corridor.  
All was still, and a few snippets of conversation and music, from a TV set echoed out of an open window. Air conditioner units hummed away in the distance.  
I crept along the balcony, crouching low, under the windowsills, and close to the wall. As I got closer, I glimpsed somebody in the target suite, through the gap in the curtain. They had their back to me, watching the road, or rather the parking lot for the supermarket across the street, where the ransom was to be dropped in a trash can.  
Quietly, slowly, I uncurled a fibre optic probe and fed it under the door, tapping my glasses to open the display. The fish-eye lens distorted the image, but there was the guy by the window, and another on the bed. Both had their shotguns to hand. The guy on the bed staring out of focus, his contact lenses glowing with a rainbow of colours, as he watched something in his Headspace.  
There was somebody else in the broom-closet sized bathroom, handcuffed to the shower rail.  
Wendy.  
I drew the probe back, and tucked it in my pocket.  
Slowly, quietly, I stood, and drew my pistol. Somewhere in the babble, Garrow was calmly telling me that the swiftest and surest way to protect the girl was to shoot both men through the window. Two bullets the back of the watcher’s head at near point blank range, then two in the chest of the one on the bed, before he could roll over and take aim.  
My heart pounded in my chest. My throat went dry.  
I’ve killed before, and I’m good at it: quick, efficient, and very well practiced. Living with the consequences after? Less so. I could live without more blood on my hands.  
Or die trying.  
I drew a breath, pictured my route in my head, and tensed my muscles.  
I slipped my pistol back under my jacket.  
A sharp kick tore the door open, ripping the lock from the flimsy wood of the frame. I charged into the room, straight at the man by the window, as he brought up his shotgun. I grabbed the gun, twisting he barrel aside, and driving the stock sharply back, into his face. He staggered, off balance, and I shoved onto the bed, onto his mate, who was still trying to pump a round into the chamber of his shotgun.  
Now, that was just sloppy. Back when I was a kid, at the Orphanage, I would have got a week’s defaulters for a mistake like that.  
I slammed the first guy’s face into the bed frame, and he went limp, a couple palm strikes to the forehead left the other in a daze. I fished out a reel of engineer’s tape, and cuffed them both to the bedstead, by their wrists and ankles, with a wadded gag of tap to muffle their complaints.  
Satisfied, I stepped into the bathroom.  
Wendy cowered away, her eyes wide, and full of tears. She cowered as far away from me as her cuffs would allow.  
She was still dressed in the same clothes, the party skirt and low cut top, she had worn for the party, the kind that suggested flesh rather showing it. Her deadly heels were missing, her feet bare.  
“It’s okay,” I said, softly, releasing her from the cuffs.  
Wendy dropped to the floor, and crawled into a corner, nursing the raw skin on her wrists, panting for breath.  
“Hi,” I said gently, offering her my hand. “I’m Joe. Would you like to go home?”  
Wendy nodded.  
I eased her to her feet, and helped her walk out the room. I tried to get her to look away from the thugs, but she gave them a long, hard, pained stare, on her way past.  
She didn’t resist when I walked her on, and got her to the car.  
  
TWO  
Okay, here’s the quick version, to get you up to speed. I’ll go into detail later, if I can bare to, but for now, we can cover the basics. The stuff you need to know, for my life to make sense. Or at least to make about much sense as it ever will.  
In the mid-nineteen nineties the cold war ended. The boom years that followed saw unprecedented co-operation that achieved many wonderful things. Most of the world’s nations joined the World Government. Each remained a sovereign nation, managing their own affairs, but they co-operated on universal standards and laws, working together to combat famine, poverty, and climate change, propping each other up, building a fairer world, and ensuring the rights, responsibilities, and freedoms of every citizen were protected to a single standard.  
It was the World Government, rather any single nation, that established permanent colonies on the moon, in Antarctica, and on the ocean floor, effectively establishing whole new nations.  
Over the course of some years it was decided that world peace was best defended by a unified World Army, World Navy, and World Air Force, and a combined intelligence agency.  
WIN, the World Intelligence Network, superseded the CIA, KGB, and other national intelligence groups. In a changing world, it faced new threats, that required new solutions.  
I was one of those solutions.  
At nine years old, I was the first experiment in the project that became known as The Orphanage. I was one of the small number of people whose neural network was compatible with downloading, and adapting to, cerebral impulse patterns recorded from living subjects. Need a fighter pilot? Pop me in the machine, and overlay the patterns from an experienced pilot on my mind. I will know how to fly, with most of their knowledge, and some of their instincts, for a time at least. The knowledge mostly faded away after a few days.  
Mostly.  
After a few years they expanded the project from just me, to a squad called the Orphanage, and better refined the technology. All in all, I was a pretty good spy for a little under fourteen years.  
In my mid-twenties I retired from the service.  
The after-effects of the process had become too much. The babble was lingering in my thoughts, getting in the way of my own thoughts, and it was getting harder and harder to work out which thoughts were my own, and which were ghosts of somebody else’s. I got fed up of craving coffee I couldn’t stand the taste of, and such.  
WIN phased me out, had me sign an official secrets act, and paid me off for services rendered.  
Since then I’ve lived under a few different names, and established myself in the private sector. I’m fully licensed (most my licences are more or less genuine), and competitively priced. When the need arises, I can be a little more… morally flexible than the guys you find in the phonebook.  
Flexibility is… a step in the right direction. It’s a step away from pre-teens taking out arms dealers, by throwing a hand grenade into their weapons cache.  
That was my first mission by the way.  
I was nine years old, and wasn’t allowed to stay up and watch TV after the watershed, but I had a confirmed kill count in double digits.  
Back then it seemed fun.  
Yeah… Maybe it’s because my medication lists paranoia and insomnia as potential side effects, or maybe it’s because I was trained all too well in the art of trusting absolutely nobody, but… I’m not entirely convinced it was a coincidence that the nightmares and sleepless nights only started when the processing stopped.  
Again… I wasn’t a big fan of not trusting my own thoughts, especially when I was getting a bit older, and wiser, and aware that there probably should have been some consequences to the stuff I did.  
  
THREE  
I pulled up at the back of the hotel.  
Senator Autumn Walker was waiting there, with a few of her staff. Walker was tall, handsome, and prim, with a face built for frowning.   
I walked around the car and opened the side door for Wendy.  
She rose shakily to her feet.  
Autumn gestured, and directed an aide to approach us.  
Wendy cowered from me, as I opened the door.  
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.  
Wendy bolted past me, and ran for her life. She leapt at her mother, and snared her in a hug. Walker wrapped herself around her daughter, and hurried into the hotel. Wendy glanced back, terror and sadness in her eyes.  
I never quite got used to the way some people looked at me. None of us ever want to believe we are the monsters, right?  
One of the aides walked over and gave me a bright smile. “Mister Lysander.”  
“Is that everything?” I asked.  
“Ah,” the aide said. “I assume we do not need to remind you that that tonight’s events are to be held in the strictest confidence?”  
“That’s what I’m being paid for,” I said, with a polite smile. “Speaking of which?”  
The aide tapped a display on his watch, and blinked commands in his headspace. “There. Your fee has been transferred, and is your account.”

*  
I dropped the rental car back at the airport, strolled through the security checks (with a little help of the anti-scanning mesh in my briefcase, which masked the concealed compartments), and onto a plane back to New York, in short order.  
It was drizzling with rain by the time I stepped off the jet and found my car in the long stay lot. It was a popular model of cruiser, mid-range, and an anonymous silver. The kind that didn’t look out of place anywhere. It would never be too posh, or too cheap, to be at home anywhere in the city.  
I took popped open one of the concealed compartments on my case, and took out a hand scanner. I ran it over the car, sweeping for bugs, bombs, or other nasty surprises. There was nothing untoward, so I dumped my case on the passenger seat, and drove off into the night.  
My house was in upstate New York.  
It would be too much to call it a home. It was somewhere I happened to reside for the moment, rather than somewhere I had settled. It had been a long time since I had felt anywhere was a home. The house was furnished by catalogue, the photographs were all landscapes, chosen from the internet, the bookshelves packed by a company who charged by the foot, and delivered books by colour (all of mine were red), with no personal connection or homely touches in sight.  
The closest the house came to a personal indulgence was the safe room in the cellar, that housed my office. The office space I rented in the city was a façade, somewhere to meet clients, and have my mail directed. My files, my secrets, and the whole of my professional life, was secured in the basement.  
Mac met me at the top of the stairs, and followed me down into the cellar. She was a black and white cat, sleek and nimble, with eyes all the colours of the ocean at once. She rubbed against my ankle and demanded attention as I checked to see if my payment had gone through (it had), and stowed away my tools of the trade.  
Mac mewed hungrily.  
I tickled her behind the ears. “Was it you missed, or your food? Eh?”  
She hopped up the stairs, and meowed at me from the doorway.  
I sighed and locked the vault door behind me, on my way to the kitchen.  
Mac hungrily yummed down on the kibble in her auto-dispenser, while I opened a pouch of chicken and gravy for her.  
She looked up from her kibble, and scowled at me.  
“They didn’t have lamb,” I told her.  
She narrowed her eyes.  
“Do you want this or not?”  
She padded over to her bowl, and whined impatiently.  
“Yeah…” I stroked the back of her neck. “I missed you too.”  
Okay. Maybe there was one thing in the house that made it feel a little like a home. It wasn’t by choice. I was on a stakeout, and I saw her, literally, being dumped in the trash. She’s a bossy moo, but she kind of grows on you.  
I washed my hands, and stood gormlessly staring at the contents of my fridge. The babble of ghosts debated the ways they would address my hunger. I shushed them, and set to work, mixing up some pasta from scratch, and a simple sauce from the left over squash, and half tub of crème fraiche that needed using up before they turned nasty.  
There’s a strange zen to cooking. When I’m juggling tasks, making sure everything cooks about the same time and comes together on the plate, the ghosts quiet down. I guess I never had to borrow the thoughts of a chef, so they all just have to trust me.  
It’s about the only thing I ever learned for myself.  
Mac hopped up on the counter, and made eyes at me.  
“You know the rules,” I warned her.  
Mac curled up and stared at me, hoping to convince me to share.  
“You won’t like it,” I promised her, heaping my dinner in a bowl, and strolling out to the dining room.  
The drizzle became a storm, and thunder rolled over the forest clad hills.  
I sat in silence, and ate, trying not to let my memories stray into the confusion of smoke and gunfire.  
*  
The ringing of my phone woke me from restless, haunted, sleep.  
I groped out from under the covers, and flicked open my phone. “Hello?”  
“Mister Lysander?” A taut, female voice, asked. It had a soft, husky Polish accent.  
I flicked on my glasses, and tapped open my security Apps, tracing the call. “To whom am I talking?”  
“My name is Hessdalen,” the voice said. “I understand you are reliable when it comes to… certain kinds of work?”  
The call was from a mid-Atlantic relay station, which meant she was on one of the vacuum trains running across the seabed.  
“That,” I said evenly, “would depend on the nature of the work.”  
The woman hesitated. “A simple job. I am travelling to meet friends in New Jersey. I wish to be escorted to my destination safely, and to ensure it has not been… compromised, by… bugs, or cameras.”  
“I understand,” I said, evenly. “I should warn you these services are not cheap.”  
“I will pay,” she promised. “I am a woman of means. I am sorry. I would normally arrange to meet you at your offices, but given the circumstances…”  
“It can be done,” I said.  
She paused. “I will not be travelling alone.”  
“How many?”  
“Myself,” she said, “and one child.”  
“When is your train due?” I asked.  
“Eleven hundred hours, at New York International Terminus,” she said.  
“I will meet you,” I promised. “I need a number to contact you on.”  
She gave me the number, and some details for her train. I promised to call her back.  
Hers was a train from Europe, high-speed through the vacuum tunnels on the Atlantic seabed. When I had been a kid, those tunnels had been the epitome of the future, a testament to what could be achieved when the nations of the World Government acted together, for something greater than national interest. In New York they reached out across the Atlantic, spreading out like spiderwebs, not only connecting the continents, but the mining colonies, and the larger undersea settlements.  
I went a through a phase, before I was adopted, of wanting to run away to the Atlantic settlements. To Arcadia, the abandoned settlement where the engineers and technicians who built the tunnel network had lived. It was no longer connected to the tunnel system, and had been abandoned to eek out precious resources a little bit further.  
The voices babbled.  
I tumbled out of bed, dragged myself through a shower and into a suit.   
Shortly after, I was on my way into the city.  
  
FOUR  
New York International Terminus wasn’t really in New York. When the Intercontinental Railways were lain across the sea bed, they built a new island, out in the bay. The station itself was a giant snail-shell of irregular glass, that looked ocean blue-grey when it caught the sun, or emerald on a cloudy day, connected to the mainland by rail and road bridges.  
I emerged from the underground car park by the elevator, carrying my briefcase, and wearing my glasses.  
Inside it was bright and airy, spacious enough to feel busy rather than crowded, with the occasional echo caught in the web of supports for the curving ceiling. Outside rain was pattering over the city, but inside it felt summery and fresh. My glasses connected to the local data-flow, and my Headspace filled the blank walls and empty spaces with virtual information ports, and pop-up adverts for exciting destinations, movies I might enjoy on my journey, or places I could drink beer while I waited.  
The news channels were all talking about the growing Fractured World movement, in the UK and some US states, arguing for a withdrawal from the security of the World Government. Without risk, they argued, the identity of the nation would be lost, blended into a grey, characterless, mass, that was ‘worse than the wars we endured on our own’. (It should be noted, none of those commenting were old enough to have been to war, but… whatever).  
I hated those guys.  
I took a stroll around the shops on the balcony level, and leant on the balustrade railing to look down over the parades between the platforms. I watched for patterns that didn’t fit in the chaos, the people who were too still, or who moved against the tide of passengers.  
The first person I noticed was the guy waiting around the gates to platform seventeen. He was leaning against a pillar, muttering into his collar, and touching his earpiece, trying to hear better. There was a heavy pistol holstered under his jacket.  
I tapped open my Snoop-Suite, and peeled away the layers of data. There were the networks and nodes for the station, dozens of devices streaming on the wi-fi, from the tills and credit machines in the stores, to the phones and devices carried by the passengers and tourists.  
And… there it was. A secured Tac-Com Net. Tactical and Communications. Those are usually the domain of the armed forces, or security services. This one was outside their usual frequencies, and heavily scrambled and secured.  
Which was… interesting. I couldn’t breach the network, to listen in, but I knew it was there.  
I strolled around, watching for the other agents. I could spot three more of them, placed ready to follow their target, whichever exit they chose to use. All of them were armed.  
The babble was loud in the back of my head.  
“Okay,” I muttered. “What are we thinking?”  
Miss Tsuki appeared beside me. “They are well placed. This was well planned. Presumably they wont want to engage in public, which offers us a chance.”  
“It’s heavy handed, “I said.  
Tsuki nodded. “And expensive.”  
“What else?” I asked.  
The babble hissed.   
Juliet replaced Tsuki. She leant on the balustrade, toying with her hair. “They have guns, but this is a snatch job. They are going to try and corner her, drag her out to a vehicle. Which means…”  
“They are going to jump me in the car park,” I said.  
Juliet sighed. “It’s what I would do.”  
“No, it isn’t,” I reminded her.  
“Sure, it is,” she said, with a laugh. “If I was big, dumb, and this was the only place I knew my target was going to be.” She paused. “Well… If I was desperate enough.”  
I sighed. “Fair enough. So, I’m going to have to leave the car here for a while, and take the train.” I took out my phone. “Plan B it is then.” I tapped through to a contact, and dialled.  
“Yes?” The voice on the other end was painfully cockney, lazily laconic, and full of rough edges.  
“Nosey!” I said, with a grin. “I don’t suppose you fancy a job?”  
“Oh, it’s you.” Nosey growled. Nobody ever called him Al. He didn’t even call himself Al anymore. It was always Nosey. “What kind of a job?”  
“Well, I could really do with a pick up from a Metro station, somewhere around the Garden Tower?”  
“Somewhere? You don’t know?” He complained.  
“I know,” I sighed. “It’s one of those days.”  
“Triple rate,” Nosey said.  
“Triple?” I groaned. “Fine. It’ll be me and passengers, probably with somebody chasing us down. We’ll want to move.”  
“Oh good,” he said, in a way suggested one of his grins, “you get to pay for any fines too.”  
“Agreed.” I tapped off, and dialled another number.   
“Hello?” Hessdalen asked.  
“Good morning, ma’am,” I said, moving back towards the platform. “You are due in a few minutes. I want you to listen very carefully. On leaving the train I want you to walk briskly and immediately to the stairs up to the mall gallery. I want you head for the stall that sells the plush statues of liberty. You will notice men following you. Don’t look at them. Don’t slow down. Keep moving.”  
“I understand,” she confirmed, as the train approached the platform.  
I strolled to the corner, and leant against the photo-booth, near the stall that sold the plush Statue of Liberty toys. I watched the train wheeze into the platform, the doors sighing open, and the crowd hurrying for the gates, with their passports ready, crowding in a bottleneck as they held up their passports for the machine to scan, and had their iris prints taken.  
They began to fan out into the concourse.  
A rangy, beaky woman with dark hair tied back my a scarf, over a smart tweed suit, ushered an impish, dimply girl, in a duffle coat and plaid skirt. The woman was in maybe in her late thirties, or early fifties, carrying herself like a governess, marching in a determined way. The kid was maybe ten, or twelve, and she was not carrying herself like a kid. She was carrying herself like a hunter worried something big and nasty with claws had her scent.  
They veered towards the escalator.  
The man with the gun followed them. The others headed for the lifts or stairs further around the concourse, cutting off their escape routes.  
Right. This should be interesting.  
I let the woman and the girl hurry past me.  
The man was close on their tail, his pistol drawn. I stepped into his way, and smiled, holding my briefcase like a shield. He tried to shoot me, but the bullet shattered against my briefcase, chewing a hole in the leather, but not even scratching the armour plate beneath.  
The man stared at it in surprise.  
I whacked him in the face with the broadside of the case, and knocked him out. He went limp, so I shoved him back into the photobooth, slumped him into the stall, and pulled the curtain.  
The woman and the girl were at the stall, the second of the thugs was closing in.  
I tapped my phone. “Hessdalen?”  
“Yes?” She looked around, worried.  
“Walk towards the stairs to the Metro. Ignore the man who will try to intercept you at the corner with the café.”  
“The one with the gun?” Hessdalen enquired, looking around, trying to spot me.  
“Ignore me too. Keep walking,” I said, making sure I was ahead of them.  
The second thug lurked at the corner, trying to hide his gun under a magazine. I strolled into the café, grabbed the coffee of the tray of a waitress. She cried out, in shock, and anger. The gunman turned to look at me.  
I hurled the coffee at him. The cup smacked his face so hard, it should have knocked him out, but only staggered him. I grabbed the tray, and clubbed him with it.  
This time his knees buckled under him, and he dropped the gun. I kicked it away, and stamped on his face.  
There were shouts from the café, and lots of people stopping to look at me.  
I ran, sprinting down the concourse.  
The third of the thugs sprinted after me.  
I rounded the corner, onto the corridor towards the stairs to the Metro platforms. Hessdalen was already halfway down the corridor. Policemen in high-vis vests were running towards the promenade. I slowed to a brisk walk, and tried to look less like somebody running for their life, and more like somebody a little late for their train.  
The guy behind me? He didn’t, and he had a gun visible under his jacket. The officers piled onto him.  
The fourth walked around the corner, closer than I had hoped.  
Damn it.  
I caught up with Hessdalen, and the girl. “Miss Hessdalen?”  
She glanced at me. “Mister Lysander?”  
I nodded.  
The girl smiled at me, knowingly.  
“Keep calm,” I said, “and don’t look around. We are headed for the Garden Tower, on the New Line.”  
Hessdalen nodded. “You do realise that we are still being followed?”  
“Green jacket,” I said, “some way behind us? He’s armed.”  
“He would be,” the girl said, in a precious little English accent.  
“Oh?” I asked.  
Hessdalen nodded. “If he weren’t, we would hardly have needed your help.”  
We reached the bottom of the stairs and joined the crowd on the platform, trying to board the waiting train.  
We hopped aboard.  
The gunman stepped into a carriage down from us. I could see him lurking in the crowd, trying not to look like he was watching us. He was broad shouldered, and heavy set, built like a grizzly bear that somebody had shaven, and stuffed in a scarlet turtleneck and a herringbone jacket. There were pinhead dots of metal around his eyes, the surface signs of implants.  
I checked the display above the seats. The train was due to depart in six minutes. I made some swift calculations in my head, and tapped Nosey’s number on my phone.  
“Joe?” He asked.  
“Yeah,” I said. “Can you make it to Willow Square Station in the next twelve minutes?”  
“I can,” he said. “I’ll be waiting.”  
“Willow Square?” The Girl asked.  
I nodded.  
“What’s at Willow Square?” The girl demanded.  
“A big pink car,” I said.  
Hessdalen choked on a disbelieving laugh. “Don’t you think you could go for something a little more…subtle?”  
I shrugged. “If we get separated, and you have to run without me, I would rather be fairly confident you got in the right car.”  
The girl giggled. “I don’t know if that is really clever, or really stupid.”  
The doors hissed closed.  
The train whined, as it built up speed, and shot off down the monorail track.  
  
FIVE  
The train zoomed through the tunnels. The stations on the new line were named for the super-spires, the elegant, sail like towers that had redefined the city skyline as they replaced the ugly old concrete towers that had fallen into disrepair. Each tower had effectively become a district of the city unto itself, containing shopping malls, offices, local services, and apartments.  
Willow Square was one of the biggest, instantly recognisable for the balcony gardens that jutted out from the tower, on stepped platforms.  
The station was built to the same grand scale as the rest of the building, as vast and airy as a cathedral, with walls that curved organically, in fluid shapes, and few straight lines.  
We stepped off the train and hurried for escalator to the street level.  
Our tail followed us, shoving his way through the crowd.  
The escalator brought us out into the plaza, surrounded by shops. I guided my wards towards the Eastern entrance, closest to the loading bays for one of the department stores.  
We stepped out into the rain and marched past the taxi ranks. Nosey’s pink and white muscle car was parked around the corner. It was an aggressive looking wedged shape car, with as much in common with a fighter jet as a family saloon, with a double stack of wheels at the front, for traction, a grill like the grin of a shark, to suck cool air in, and big fins at the back to disguise the heat sinks expelling the hot air.  
Nosey was a scruffy urchin of a young man, with a flat cap over his unfashionably long hair, Byronic brow, heavy lidded eyes, and jowly face, that fell easily into a dour huff. He wore a leather jacket over a paisley shirt, and flared trousers, that had been in fashion before he spent a few years in prison.  
I shoved my wards ahead of me. “Get in the car.”  
The girl turned to say something, but Hessdalen shoved her into the car.  
“Oi!” Nosey shouted. “What are you… Oh lummy!”  
The goon rounded the corner, gun raised. “Hessdalen!”  
I crashed into the thug, knocking the gun aside, driving a knee into his groin, and smacking my briefcase into his chops.  
The shaven grizzly bear staggered, but didn’t go down.   
Damn. I hammered at his wrist with my briefcase, so hard there was a crunch of bone. The gun fell from his fingers. I kicked it away.  
Grizzly swung a savage punch at me. It literally lifted me off my feet and sent me flying. I landed against the car with a thud.  
Nosey gave a sharp look from the driver’s seat. “Mind the paintwork! It’s custom!”  
“It was meant to be red!” I snapped, dragging myself into the car.  
Mister Grizzly grabbed his gun with his left hand, and opened fire, in a rapid flurry of shots.  
Hessdalen threw herself over the girl.  
Nosey stamped on the accelerator and we sped off into traffic. “Oh, bloody Hell…”  
I checked the mirror, as I slipped my gun out of my case.  
Mister Grizzly had just a dragged a cab driver out his car, and was speeding after us.  
Nosey hurtled through some red lights, swerved around the lorry with the right of way, and kept on flying. The taxi squealed through the junction after us, narrowly missing a collision at break neck speeds.  
“Persistent little sod,” Nosey grumbled, happily throwing the wheel, “isn’t he?”  
We skidded out wide, with a shrill scream from the brakes, as we entered an alley sideways, and lurched down the ramp to a car park.  
Hessdalen gripped the back seat in white knuckles, craning her head to watch the car in pursuit.  
The girl sat straight, wearing a serene, oddly aloof, smile.  
The taxi lost a wing mirror, and scraped against a wall, but was still on our tail as we screeched through a jack knife turn to double back around another lane of parked cars, in the subterranean lot.  
The girl sniffed. “Do you have to use that kind of language?”  
“Ho?” Nosey asked, sharpening and refining his tone to that of a butler. “Hi am sorry, me-lah-dee. Hi will hen-devour to be more suitable to your del-hicate ears.”  
The girl grimaced. “Don’t do that.”  
The taxi roared up behind us, and slammed into the back of the car.  
Nosey grinned. “You ready? We’ll do the Berlin thing.”  
“Okey dokey,” I agreed, thumbing the safety on my pistol.  
Nosey hit the exit ramp, and hoisted us into a handbrake turn. I threw the door open, as we were still scything through the arc, and leant out to take aim.  
The taxi flew out the exit ramp, and I put three bullets through the front wheel.  
The taxi spun out of control and slammed into the side of a building.   
Nosey changed gear, hauled on the wheel, and brought us out onto a busy street. “Where are we headed?”  
“Jersey,” Hessdalen said.  
“Right you are then,” Nosey said, driving casual as a police cruiser rushed past us with a banshee howl of sirens.  
*  
The house was set well away from the lonely country road, apparently dropped at random in a meadow of grass and wildflowers. It was a fairly modern timber house, whose design suggested, rather than imitated, a classic gothic farmhouse.  
Nosey parked right the steps up to the stoop.  
“Wait here,” I said, taking my scanner from the briefcase.  
The babble in the back of my head whispered all kinds of nasty ideas about who, and what, might be waiting for me in the house, as I walked from room to room, scanning away. There was a good security system built into the house, by domestic standards, but it was an on-site system. Motion detectors and security lights around the house, that would that let you know if somebody approached, and central locking on the windows and doors that you could use if needed. There was a vault in the basement that was a safe room, fall out bunker, and storm shelter all in one.  
The house had a sterile, virgin feel. The air was undisturbed. Everything but the security system was switched off at the distribution board, and the furniture was covered in plastic sheets, like it was freshly delivered. There was still a film coating on the kitchen surfaces. The line was in fresh packs, the bathroom stocked with hotel vanity packs.  
I swept the house twice, and took a deep dive into the data flow.  
It was clean to the point of being sterile.  
I stepped back outside, and nodded at Hessdalen.  
She smiled, and helped the girl out the car. “We will have to rough it tonight and go shopping tomorrow.”  
The girl nodded.  
Hessdalen glanced at Nosey. “I don’t suppose you would mind driving to a supermarket for us?”  
He held up a hand. “My rates are entirely reasonable.”  
“And,” I said, tossing him my keys, “picking up my car from the International?”  
He nodded. “It’s safe to stay?”  
Hessdalen nodded. “I believe so.”  
Nosey’s grin flattened, and his eyes narrowed. “She’s staring at me, isn’t she?”  
I looked past him.  
The girl was on the stoop, sat on the swing bench.  
I nodded.  
“She,” Nosey muttered, “gives me the creeps. What kind of a kid sits that calmly, during all that chaos, eh?”  
I nodded. “You aren’t being paid to like her.”  
“I’m not being paid enough to put up with her!” He scoffed, as he ducked back in the car, and drove off.  
I stared at the girl.  
I had some pretty uncomfortable ideas about precisely what kind of a kid she was: Sugar, spice, and Brain Impulse Galvanoscopes.  
She stared back at me, with a piercing, far too knowing look.  
  
SIX  
The kid was in the lounge, sat cross legged on the plastic wrapped sofa, staring at the TV without watching it. She was watching the reflection in the patio doors, watching Nosey sipping his pint of cider from a dew soaked bottle, Hessdalen leaning on the counter, scowling in thought, and me chopping and frying my way to a passable honey and mustard chicken, mushrooms in garlic and white wine sauce, and pan fried gnocchi.  
“So…” I said, quietly. “She’s an Orphan?”  
“Not exactly,” Hessdalen said. “But… it’s the same general principles. Just…”  
“Just?” I asked.  
Hessdalen sighed. “She was not trained in the interests of World Security.” She softened her voice a little. “Quite the opposite, as it happens.”  
Nosey puffed out his cheeks. “And what is that supposed to mean?”  
Hessdalen shrugged. “It is a long, complicated, story, and… You aren’t WIN, so my enemies are not privy to your movements and actions, but that certainly does not mean I trust you.”  
I shrugged. “I can’t protect you if I don’t know what we are facing.”  
Hessdalen sighed, and took an ID wallet from her pocket. She flicked it open at me. “I am Special Agent Kamala Hessdalen, Federal Agent Bureau.” She glanced at Nosey. “And you are Joseph McClaine.”  
I winced. “It’s been a long time since anybody called me by that name.”  
She nodded. “I know. Since the death of Juliet Shore, you have been… reluctant to communicate with WIN, which is one reason I am fairly certain you haven’t been compromised.”  
Nosey choked on his cider. “Compromised?”  
Hessdalen nodded. “Do the Six Seven One mean anything to you?”  
I looked at Nosey. He turned away, trying not to laugh.  
“They are a myth,” I said, evenly. “A fairy tale, like the Illuminati, or Terrorfish, or…”  
Hessdalen stared at me.  
“Okay,” I said, holding up my hands. “They are a dark money organisation pulling strings, and trying to engineer friction between the Rogue states and Independent Nations, so there is always just enough war, and unrest, to be good business.”  
Hessdalen nodded. “And what if somebody was trying to do it for real?”  
I shuddered. The babble went silent.  
“How?” I demanded.  
Hessdalen raised her voice. “Television! Please switch to a rolling news channel.”  
The screen blinked to the marches in London, for the British Independence Movement.  
I stared at the screen for a long while.  
Hessdalen pointed at the screen. “Look at what’s happening out there. If Britain rips itself out of the World Government, what will happen? Financial uncertainty, and a swift drop into recession. Look who is benefiting? The zealots. The racists. The extremists. The whole country is becoming a powder keg.”  
“Oi!” Nosey straightened, and waved a finger at her. “Don’t go thinking that lot speaks for everybody. Not everybody with a little bit of pride is a knuckle dragging, Neanderthal!”  
“No,” I said quietly, “but if they want chaos, they just need to stir up the ones who are.”  
Nosey frowned. “And who profits from that?”  
“Investors,” the girl said, appearing at the kitchen door. There was something cold and glassy behind her eyes. An anger. A pain. Maybe even a hint of betrayal. “Stage one: the economy instantly drops. This is terrible news for the many, but for the wise few, it is a chance to short out your investments and make a considerable profit.” She opened the fridge and poured herself a glass of milk. “Stage Two: Chaos. As the economy collapses, target the desperate with a suitable narrative. Use social media data to identify those likely to sympathise with our chosen narrative and bombard them with images and content that gives them somebody to be angry at. Scapegoat the immigrant, portray voices of reason as a patronising liberal elite, put a crowbar in the divisions.”  
Nosey closed his eyes. “You mean, put a match to the blue touch paper, and step well back? I’m sorry Miss, but nobody wins that way.”  
The girl sipped her milk. “Of course, they do. Step Three: Buy cheap. The economy is blood stained and broken, industry is retreating to safer grounds, people are desperate. There is no better time to buy. Property. Companies. Farms. Anything.” She held up a finger. “Step four: Restore Order. Implement a regime that will quickly, and efficiently, extinguish the flames that have been fanned, and clear the ground for rebuilding. The regime will, of course, funnel decades’ worth of lucrative contracts to our companies, for the redevelopment and renewal of the country.”  
I sighed. “And, you were going to be one of the agitators?”  
“No,” the girl said. “I was going to be one of the new regime.”  
Hessdalen nodded. “It’s true. She escaped a school called ‘The Academy’. They were using BIG RAT technology to educate and programme the children, to be… the rulers their plan will require in a decade or so.”  
The girl smiled, sadly. “My Grandmother always talked about some of us being the elders and betters, being the superior class of person. The Academy tried to make it a literal reality. Unfortunately for them, dear old Grandma was always saying that, because her lesson never really stuck with me. I am afraid it all rather… went against my grain.”  
“Poppy,” Hessdalen said, gently, “are you okay?”  
The girl nodded. “They are in the government. They are in WIN. They are… everywhere. Some by choice. Others… maybe not. They… change.”  
I grimaced. “Change?”  
“My partner,” Hessdalen said. “He was working with us, digging out some of the… militia groups they are preparing. The real Six Seven One. He was himself when I dropped him at his front door. A few hours later he was… wrong. He was cold, and twisted, and talking about a greater good. About…us needing to choose the right side.”  
Poppy stared at me. “It was the same with my father. When he sent me to that school, he was…changed, in ways I don’t know anybody would believe.”  
The ghosts were unanimous at the back of my mind, but it was Juliet who gave them all voice.  
“Joe,” she whispered, at my side (even if I knew she wasn’t really stood there), “she is telling the truth, isn’t she?”  
I nodded. “I believe you.”  
Nosey rubbed his face, and blew out his cheeks. “Oh lummey! What are we meant to do then?”  
Poppy stared at me. “I need to go and see my father. If I can break free of this, so can he. Maybe others. Maybe…”  
Hessdalen nodded. “Maybe we stand a chance of stopping this.”  
I nodded. “I’m in.”  
Poppy stared at Nosey. “And you?”  
He shrugged. “My rates are reasonable.”  
“I’ll pay a retainer,” I said.  
Hessdalen shrugged. “Can we trust him? He is… a criminal.”  
“Was!” Nosey corrected her.  
Poppy grinned. “We need a criminal.”  
I looked at Hessdalen. “Where is her father?”  
“His Lordship?” Hessdalen asked. “That is… difficult. We don’t know where he goes. There are gaps in his social calander, sometimes a day, sometimes weeks. He just… vanishes.”  
I looked at the girl.  
She smiled back at me. “Can you help me find him? Reach him?”  
“We will need some help,” I admitted.  
She grinned. “But you know somebody who can help us out?”  
“I have a few ideas,” I admitted. “If I can convince some people to pay back some old favours.”  
Hessdalen gave me a look. “And we will have to stay off the radar.”  
“Trust me,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “The guys I have in mind will definitely want to keep off the grid.”  
Nosey looked at me. “Where are you headed?”  
“Marineville,” I answered, quietly. “First thing tomorrow.”  
“Marineville?” Hessdalen blinked. “We have the world’s security agencies all looking for us, and you want to go to Marineville? Ninety percent of the population work at WASP headquarters. Any one of them could be brainwashed!”  
Nosey cocked his head. “Well, if they’re trying on it the lard bucket from Marineville, they are wasting their time. He doesn’t have a brain to wash, and he’s already corrupt as a three dollar bill.”  
Hessdalen groaned. “And why are we hiring him?”  
I raised an eyebrow at Nosey.  
Nosey sighed. “Because if anybody is going to believe the Six Seven One are real, it will be Maxwell Masters. He’s the quickest route to finding the girl’s father.”  
  
SEVEN  
Marineville is an ugly city, made from straight lines and brutal practicality. It’s a company town, where the company happens to be the World Aquatic Security Patrol, the coast guard who police the deep sea colonies, mines, and utility platforms. Marineville itself was built in the eighties, in the bitter winter of the Cold War when the world was forever teetering in the brink.  
“Where is it?” Poppy demanded, as we climbed out of the car, and stared at the sprawling wasteland of concrete.  
“This…” Nosey said, crossing his arms. “This is why they have the subsidise most the bloody city as Service Billets! Who would choose to live there, just for a job?”  
Poppy harrumphed.  
Hessdalen patted the girl on the shoulder. “They must be running a drill or something.”  
We were parked at the city limits, where a road just met a simple barrier at an unmanned gatehouse.  
I leant on the front of the car, and toyed sipped water from a bottle.  
Sirens wailed, and there was a deafening rumble of concealed machinery, as the concrete floor rolled back into the ground, revealing a vast cavern with dirty concrete walls, clad in pipes and cables, reinforced by metal struts.  
The buildings rose slowly from the cavern, on a funicular platform, the largest of them crowned with a control tower.  
Poppy looked worried. “Is that going to happen while we are in there?”  
“I hope not,” I admitted.  
“But?” Poppy asked.  
Nosey grimaced. “It is always a possibility.”  
“Don’t worry,” Hessdalen said. “We will not be staying long. Will we?”  
I shrugged. “The sooner we can make arrangements, the sooner we can leave.”  
Eventually the streets locked into place.  
We got back into the car.  
Poppy shifted uncomfortably. “What holds the city up?”  
I shrugged. “A sort of… giant train.”  
“What,” Poppy whispered, “if it rolls all the way back down?”  
Nosey glanced at her. “Don’t worry. It won’t happen. It… can’t happen.” He looked at me. “Can it?”  
*  
Gibson’s was a bar in one of the many near-empty streets of Marineville. It was built to the same uniform standard as its neighbours, as all the buildings for several blocks. The neon signs were the only character it was allowed.  
Hessdalen and I braved the thick cloud of lingering cigar smoke, and ventured over to the bar. Off duty officers, in silver uniforms, where nowhere else to be sociable, lounged around the pool table and booths. A small band was playing in one corner.  
I caught the barman’s eye. “Excuse me… We want to buy some masterworks.”  
The barman nodded, and opened the flap in the bar. “He’s in the cellar.”  
We ducked behind the bar, and down the narrow stairway to the cellar. The neon lights in the box shaped room were harsh, catching on the stainless-steel furniture.  
Masters stood, staring at the corkboard covered in notes, was a large, lumbering, bloated figure, with a rubbery face, ping pong ball eyes, and double chins. He wore a pearl grey suit and leant heavily on a cane.  
“Ah,” he said. “Now, this is interesting.” He pointed a cane at me. “The man who is sometimes Mister Lysander, sometimes Mister Yorrick, and sometimes Mister MacBeth…” He pointed at Hessdalen. “And the Federal Agent Bureau’s most wanted Rogue Agent.” He pointed us to a couch. “Please. To what do I owe the pleasure?”  
I glanced at the many print outs and photographs on his cork board, all connected by bits of red string. “Lord Richard James Creighton Ward,” I said.  
Masters’ smile grew wider. “Oh?”  
I rubbed the back of my neck. “I want to know how he is connected to the money moving about the situation in Britain. The independence movement.”  
Master tapped his lip. “That sounds… interesting.”  
“And,” I said, softly, “his connection to a group calling itself the Six Seven One.”  
Masters smile became a grin. “I’m sorry. Do my ears deceive me?”  
“No,” I said. “I’m not… interested in your speculation and theories, just the base facts.”  
“But,” Masters gurgled, “you want to know if they are real?”  
Hessdalen waved a finger at him. “We want to know where the money goes. We know it involves targeted information and agitation in Britain, on social media, and we know money is being moved, preparing to profit from the crash. We want to know who is just reading the wind and who…”  
“Who,” Masters said, “is actively pushing the situation to the brink?”  
Hessdalen nodded.  
“And another thing,” I said. “We want to know where Creighton-Ward and his chums vanish to. They disappear off the grid, and reappear some time later. It’s become a habit. I want to know where he goes.”  
Masters leant on his cane. “So… you are finally waking up to the idea that the Six Seven One might be real eh?”  
I shrugged. “No more than I will believe there are fish men living in the ocean realms,” I said. “But… I think there’s something out there willing to dress up as the bogeyman to get a job done.”  
Masters chortled. “To you, it is a bogeyman. To… the petty racists, the white supremacists, and the vulgar little fascists of the world, it is more like… the promised land.” He pointed to the papers that clustered the corkboard. “Looking for it is like looking for a black hole in space. We can’t see it, but we can see the ripples it makes, and everything stuck in the gravity. For most of us there are whispers of bad deeds about to happen. For the bad guys? There are whispers of high expense lawyers receiving anonymous cash, to represent the true believers, funds for groups that would otherwise go extinct… The radio shows that always seem to have cash when they don’t have sponsors. The knuckle draggers have the ambition of being noticed by the Six Seven One.”  
The ghosts babbled at the back of my head.  
“Masters,” I said, carefully, “can you find him?”  
He nodded. “Give me forty eight hours. By then I will know if it can be done.”  
I smiled. “Thank you, Masters.”  
I turned to leave.  
“And Lysander,” he snapped.  
I stopped and looked back.  
Master gave me a warning look. “There are far stranger truths than the ocean people to worry about. We are nearing the days when this world will be far more dangerous than you can imagine.”  
His words sent the ghosts in my mind babbling.  
*  
That evening the others went out for a meal.  
I hung in the hotel room, drank coffee, swallowed some of my pills, and tried to keep my ghosts from babbling too loudly.  
I stepped out onto the balcony for some air. They were down in the open air restaurant near the pool. Nosey was trying to make Poppy laugh. I was pretty sure he was doing his voice with all the hadditional h’s. It was working on Hessdalen, but not on young Poppy.  
Juliet shifted in my thoughts. “She’s afraid, you idiot. If the city goes down into the bunker, we are trapped, and that way there is no escape from whatever they wanted to make her.”  
My hands trembled.  
Poppy stared up at us.  
At me.  
I shook my head and tried to remind myself I was alone on the balcony, no matter how real Juliet seemed to me.  
“You know,” Juliet whispered, “how frightening what they wanted to make her is.”  
“Yes,” I whispered.  
“What she needs,” Juliet said, softly, “is somebody to show her that this stuff doesn’t have to mess her up, that she can come out the other side unscathed.”  
I closed my eyes. “Do you know anybody like us who hasn’t been…messed up a little?”  
“Stop being so hard on yourself,” she warned me. “You are doing okay.”  
“I’m talking to a dead woman,” I snarled.  
“Well, yeah,” she giggled, “but that’s because I’m unforgettable.”  
“Not for the want of trying.”  
She touched my hand, and shook her head. “Don’t try and lie to me. And do me a favour. Drop the accent. Find another.”  
I stepped away from the balcony.  
Poppy was still staring at me, right at me, straight into my eyes.  
The kid was cold beyond her years.  
I strolled out of my room and down to the side of the pool. I didn’t join the others, I just took a lap around the waters’ edge, trying to clear my head.  
Poppy stepped away from the table, and drifted over to me. “Mister Lysander?”  
I smiled at her. “Poppy.”  
She frowned at me. “Who do you talk to?”  
“Nobody,” I said. “Myself. It doesn’t matter.”  
She cocked her head. “Am I going to end up like you?”  
I shook my head. “You aren’t going to let anybody put anything in your head that doesn’t belong there.” I smiled. “You’re smarter than me, right?”  
She narrowed her eyes. “I would like to think so.”  
We shared a little smile, and flopped onto pool loungers.  
“Really though,” she said. “Who is it you speak to?”  
I waved a hand over my head. “Some of the people whose… patterns I borrowed left… echoes in here. Now and again I get flashes of what they would think of a situation. I focus those into words, because it helps me remember which thoughts are mine, and what is the programme. You won’t need to worry about that. It took me a long time to build up all this clutter. If you have anything, it will fade away and heal over.”  
She chewed her lip. “That answers a lot, but not my question.”  
I sighed. “Her name was Jay, but her codename was Juliet. We usually worked alone, but when I got to work with somebody, it was with Jay, and…” I looked at my hands. “We would pretend to be college kids on a date, or teenagers messing around, and it was…”  
Poppy looked at me. “You weren’t entirely pretending?”  
I shook my head. “Nothing came of it. Nothing could. She never acted that way towards me, and we had to be professional, and… I didn’t think anybody would want to be that kind of close to me. The only person who was ever any kind of close to me was my father, and well, that closeness got strained when I hit puberty and started asking awkward questions about… well… what had been expected of me as a kid, and what was done to me, and if a nine year old could even be expected to know how to make free choices about jobs that occasionally came with a body count, and… then that closeness frayed, and fell apart, and… we did not part ways on good terms.” I closed my eyes. “A mission went bad, and Jay was shot in the back. There was stuff she knew, that we needed, and she couldn’t tell us because she was dying, so…” I swallowed. “So, we scanned her, and I got imprinted, and…”  
Poppy took my hand. “She loved you, didn’t she?”  
I looked away. “I didn’t deserve any of the things she believed about me.”  
Poppy looked so sad, for me. Like she thought she could take the burden off my shoulders. “She didn’t make it. Did she?”  
I shook my head. “She died while I was finishing the mission. I never found out who shot her.”  
Poppy squeezed my hand. She was wise enough not to say anything.  
“Don’t worry,” I said, softly. “You are a long way from being broken, like me. You are going to get through this. It won’t be easy. It will be scary, and dangerous, and all kinds of messed up, but you are going to brave the flames, be tempered in the forge, and when you come out the other side you will be stronger for it. I wish you didn’t have to, but it’s what we have.”  
She stared into my eyes. “You are not a bad man, Mister Lysander.”  
“I’m trying not to be,” I admitted. “But… I did a lot of bad stuff, even if I thought it was the best reasons, and… you have no idea how preciously, tediously, precocious, I used to be.”  
Poppy looked away. “I argued with my Dad. I don’t want that to be my last memory.”  
“What about?”  
Poppy flushed. “I don’t like people calling me Poppy. It isn’t my name. It’s a pet name. A baby name, and…” She groaned. “The worst of it is, from him I don’t even mind it. It’s just… everybody thinks that is what they should call me.”  
“So…” I looked at her. “What should I call you?”  
She chewed her lip. “I think you can call me Penelope.”  
“Joe.” I offered her my hand.  
Penelope shook it. “So… was she pretty?”  
I hesitated. “To me she was beautiful. Her eyes were… amazing.”  
Poppy chuckled and rose to her feet. “Next time, Joseph, tell them!”  
She walked over to join Nosey.  
I rubbed my face. “Oh, like there would ever be a next time.”  
  
SEVEN  
Two days later, I returned to the bar.  
Masters had left a note for me, with just two words on it: Lemoy Island.  
Which is why I found myself on a jet boat, bouncing over the slate grey waves up the coast from Marineville, out into the wide ocean, aiming for the craggy speck on the horizon, a jagged fang of rock, twisting its way out of the ocean, weathering a storm of waves that shattered against the dark walls of its cliffside.  
Gulls squawked and wheeled in circles above the rock.  
Nosey leant over the prow of the boat. “Why would anybody go there?”  
I looked at him. “It doesn’t look like much from the sea, but there’s a manor house on the island somewhere.”  
“Yeah?” Nosey asked. “Like… a country manor?”  
“Like,” I said quietly, “a genuine mansion. It was built in the thirties. It belonged to Clifton Briggs.”  
Nosey shrugged.  
Penelope looked up from her comic book. “He wrote ghost stories.”  
I nodded. “He wrote some of the most influential novels and short stories of the mid twentieth century. He took horror stories from being sneered at as pulp trash, to being venerated as literature.”  
“Oh.” Nosey sighed. “I prefer a romance myself.”  
I smiled. “He preferred the Great Shadow, the manifestation of human evil, lurking in the deepest chasms of the ocean, whispering in the minds of mortal men, so they would do the evil, that would cause the misery and despair on which he fed.”  
Nosey whistled. “Nothing with rival bakers becoming sweethearts one special summer then?”  
“No,” Penelope said.  
“Shame,” Nosey growled.  
Hessdalen checked the load on a pistol. “What’s the plan?”  
I shrugged. “We find a cove. You wait in the boat while I scout the island out. If there is even a whiff of trouble, you run.”  
Nosey gave me a long look. “You want to go alone?”  
“Least chance of being noticed that way,” I said.  
Hessdalen shook her head. “No deal. I’m going with you.” She smiled. “If you want to argue, you can try to stop me.”  
Nosey glared at me. “Oh, so I get left looking after Poppy?”  
“She doesn’t like Poppy,” I said.  
“She doesn’t?” Hessdalen asked.  
Penelope smiled. “I like it when you call me Poppy, Miss H.” She glanced at me. “I like Joe to call me Penelope.”  
“So…” Nosey tugged at his lapels. “What shall I call you?”  
“You?” Penelope chewed her lip. “You can call me Ma’am.”  
“H’right you h’are My Ladyship, Ma’am.”  
Penelope scowled. “Don’t do that. It’s vulgar.”  
“Hi am sure hi have no hidea what you mean,” Nosey declared, hautily, “M’lady.”  
“Nosey,” I said.  
He looked at me.  
“Look after her,” I said, gently. “Please.”  
Nosey nodded.  
We pulled into a cove on the far side of the island. A flight of stairs had been carved into the rock, slippery and smooth with glass after a century or more of rain, wind, and flood tides. The iron railing was rotting away to dust.  
Halen hopped out of the boat, onto the rocks, and edged her way to the stairs.  
I clipped the shoulder strap onto my briefcase, and skipped up onto the rocks after her. I drew my pistol from the holster under my jacket, and snapped the silencer into place.  
My ghosts hissed a blizzard of whispered warnings, of all the nooks and crannies where trouble might be lurking. I tapped through the apps on my glasses, but wasn’t picking up any data flow on the island, no comms, or security measures.  
We emerged into a garden, divided into lawns, and stepped flowerbeds, all of them overflowing with weeds and nettles. The house itself was a once grand husk of a building. The bits that weren’t choked in ivy, were painted with rot and mildew.  
I took a scanner from my case, and set it for a broad spectrum sweep. Nothing. No heat, no power, no movement, not even the tell tale signs of cloaking or shielding.  
We stepped through the broken remnants of the front door. The hallways was home to spiders, whose webs veiled the staircase, and hung like ghosts from the chandelier. The walls were crawling with mould and slime. The sea air and cold wind blew through the broken window, and ate away at the plaster and wallpaper.  
Hessdalen looked at me. “This is where he comes? Perhaps to the basement? Or a concealed…”  
I crouched and touched the thin film of dust and sand that covered the floorboards. “And perhaps he floats over the floor?”  
Hessdalen shrugged. “Your contact was wrong.”  
The ghosts screamed at me.  
Miss Tsuki stared at me, urgency in her eyes. “Or?”  
“Or,” I said, “this was a trap!” I hopped to my feet. “Stay here.”  
Hessdalen shook her head, and followed me up the stairs. “Are you sure?”  
“We’re a few miles from Marineville,” I said, “close enough to be convenient, distant enough to get away with murder.”  
I stopped at the top of the stairs, and glanced out the window.  
The scarab shaped stealth VTOL transport was coming in low, close to the ocean, skimming the waves. Each of the four stubby winglets ended in a cylindrical hushed turbine engine, as noisy as helicopter up close, but far less likely to travel and be heard on the mainland. The side door was open, and within were men in mis-matched camouflage fatigues and body armour. A hefty looking machine gun pivoted out.  
I was too slow.  
I stood a fraction of a second too long, staring at the vehicle, rooted by fear, my heart pounding in my chest. That fraction of a second, that blink of an eye cost me everything.  
I threw myself at Hessdalen, shoving her back down the stairs, trying to cover her body with mine, but it was far, far, too late. The bullets ripping holes in the wall, and shattering the window, were always going to be a Hell of a lot faster than me.  
One caught my side, sending me off balance. Three more caught Hessdalen in a strafing line, across her chest. I tackled her to the ground, and rolled down into cover with her, but she was already gone, her eyes staring without seeing, her expression slack, her last breath bubbling over her lips in a slick of blood.  
The VTOL buzzed past, down towards the cove.  
“No!” I grunted, staggering to my feet.  
Pain burned in my side, and blurred the world. I lurched off kilter down the stairs, out into the gardens.  
Gunfire rattled in the near distance.  
I dropped to my knees at the top of the steps.  
Nosey was scrambling around the crags and rocks of the coast with a feline dexterity, pursued by three of the men from the VTOL. One of them got a clear shot, and their rifle cracked. Nosey fell, slumping over a rock, as a wave crashed over him.  
Penelope screamed as the men grabbed her, and dragged her kicking, clawing, fighting for her life into the craft.  
It banked around, and strafed the boat with machine gun fire, slicing it in two, and exploding the engines in a bright orange fireball.  
I crouched in cover, and hid, as the VTOL flew off. I dared not move until the engine noise had faded away into the distance, lost in the crashing of waves, and laments of the wind.  
I lay still, closed my eyes, and begged the babble in my skull to just shut up and let me think.  
It screamed a hundred different warnings at me, through the lightning bolts of pain.  
I dragged myself up, and made my way carefully down the steps.  
The boat was gone, swallowed by the ocean. Nosey was slumped against one of the rocks. I dragged him out the sea, and lay him down. A bullet had gone straight through his shoulder, and out the other side. It didn’t look like the bullet had hit anything vital, but he was losing a lot of blood, and wasn’t showing many signs of awareness.  
I dragged him up to the steps, and made him as comfortable as he could. The trauma kit in my case is, like the rest of my kit, compact and streamlined. A can of medi-seal, two dressings, and a few odds and sods.  
Enough to keep alive if somebody shot me.  
I sliced open Nosey’s clothes, and pulled them away from his wound.  
The smell of blood turned my stomach, stirring up memories, and connections, to all the horrors of my past. I pushed through those thoughts. My hands trembled, maybe because of fear, or the cold, or the ragged wound torn in my side. I emptied a can of medi-seal into the wound, it expanded into the foamy gel. I slapped adhesive dressing on top.  
His eyes opened a little. “Where is she?”  
“They took her.”  
Nosey grimaced. “They took Hessdalen?”  
“No, Poppy.”  
He closed his eyes. “So, where’s Hessdalen?”  
I breathed out.  
“Oh,” he said quietly. “Where’s the boat?”  
“Down at the bottom.”  
“Don’t suppose there was a spare at the house?”  
“Nope.”  
He opened his eyes again, wider, and more alert. “Well, you know you are bleeding quite a lot, don’t you?”  
“I know.” I fumbled with the other concealed compartments in my case.  
“Well…” He gave me a look. “Do we have a way off this rock? Or are we just hoping somebody will be passing.”  
I took out the emergency beacon.  
Nosey looked at me. “A possibility the wrong person might pick that up, is better than the certainty that nobody will find us otherwise.”  
“I know,” I said, pulling the pin. “That’s not the problem.”  
“No?” He looked at me. “Why? What’s the problem?”  
I sighed, and slumped back against the steps. My eyes were heavy, and my head was spinning. I just needed to lay back and let go for a while. “My dad,” I said, “is going to kill me.”  
  
EIGHT  
I woke with a start, lurching out of bed and too my feet.  
I was barefoot, in unfamiliar surroundings. My side was in agony, bound tight by stitches and a dressing. I was in a backless gown, and nothing else.  
My mind raced.  
I was in an infirmary, a small, well stocked hospital ward, but the barred windows, concrete walls, and armed guards suggested a military installation. WASP uniforms. Handguns holstered at their hips.  
Marineville.  
Somebody had a hold of me, trying to force me back to bed.  
I twisted out of their grip, throwing them over my shoulder and onto the bed. The part of my brain that thought like Garrow snapped at me to break her neck and run for the door before the guards could react.  
I stopped myself, and took a step back from the nurse I had slammed onto the bed.  
She stared back at me, terrified.  
“Sorry.” I raised my hands. “Sorry.”  
The door at the far end of the ward opened. A beefcake of a man, square jawed, silver haired, and smartly dressed, with a five o clock shadow and world weary eyes marched in. Loover. The man I wanted to see second least in the whole world. He was carrying a canvas sports bag.  
“That,” Sam Loover barked, “is enough Joe. Stand down!”  
I turned to face him, and nodded at my hands. “I already stood down.”  
“You’re safe,” Sam said, his tone softer.  
I stared at him. “You will excuse me if I don’t trust you on that.”  
“What’s going on Joe?” Loover stepped closer. “You helped a bank robber, and a rogue agent kidnap a girl from a ballet school, and evade a WIN capture team.”  
“And then?” I asked.  
“And then…” He looked at me. “I have no idea what happened on that island. Where is Penelope Creighton-Ward?”  
I stared into his ice blue eyes. “You don’t know?”  
“It looks like somebody tried to fight a small war. Parker is in surgery. The agent is dead…”  
“A heavily armed strike team,” I said, “in a stealth VTOL, strafed the house with a high calibre machine gun, then hopped out to shoot Nosey and steal Penelope.” I stared at him. “There aren’t many people who have assault teams, and stealth VTOLs. WIN is one of them.”  
He stared at me. “Nothing was sanctioned.”  
“And,” I added, “what about her ballet school?”  
“What about it?” Loover said, firmly. “They want her back safe.”  
“Did you sanction a revival of Project 90?”  
Loover shook his head. “Joe, what are you talking about?”  
“She’s one of us,” I said.  
Loover sighed. “Joe, listen to yourself. You know the dangers of that project as well as anybody. It’s in mothballs. Hell. Only a few people know it exists.”  
“Like Lord Richard James Creighton-Ward?” I asked.  
Loover hesitated. His body language tensed, and he stared at me.  
“Where is his Lordship?” I asked.  
Loover frowned. “He’s in contact. He has been very worried about his daughter.”  
“Did he sanction the VTOL?” I asked.  
Loover rubbed his head. “You really think it was us?” He shook his head. “You think it was him? I know Lord Richard. I reported to him for years. He’s a good friend, a good man, and he would never do that to his daughter. There is nothing in the world more…” He trailed off.  
“Important to him?” I asked.  
Loover nodded. “The man I know would never send a gunship, and risk harming her. He would be here, at the spearhead of the investigation.”  
“And what about me?” I stared at him. “What do you know about me?”  
Loover gently pushed me back, so I sat on the bed. “What makes you think she was Project 90?”  
“She told me,” I said. “And… I saw it. She had the look. She had the instincts. It was in her eyes. The thoughts that didn’t quite mesh.” I shrugged. “I know what I saw.”  
Loover shook his head. “Okay. Why? Why did somebody put her through a BIGRAT?”  
I told him everything that Penelope, and Hessdalen had told me. Everything they knew about the Six Seven One.  
Loover didn’t flinch, or scoff, or frown at me.  
He listened, thoughtfully.  
When I stopped talking, he reached up and touched his ear, as somebody said something to him.  
“Well?” I asked. “Does my father believe me?”  
Loover folded his arms.  
“Dammit Sam!” I stared into his eyes. “I know you both have every reason to hate me, and to kick me away, but look at me. I didn’t shoot myself. I didn’t shoot at the house. I would rather have done anything than have to face you, or… him… but this is too big to ignore. Somebody is using WIN to do some very dirty work, and it’s weird. Penelope says her father stopped being her father. If you think I’m babbling nonsense, then fine, but at least check what I’m saying.”  
Loover looked away from me, and touched his ear. “He’s not one of them.”  
A pause as somebody said something to him.  
“Understood,” Loover said.  
“So…” I leant forwards. “What did Dad think?”  
“You confirmed some of what Parker said,” Loover admitted, “and some of what we feared.” He dropped the bag on my bed. “Get dressed. Let’s go for a little walk.”  
*  
Ten minutes later, I was dressed in a charcoal suit and an olive sweater.  
Loover took me through the WASP headquarters to one of their briefing rooms, with a view out over the city through the gallery windows along one wall. There were a handful of people I didn’t recognise, all of them with the grizzled, unkempt look of security agents.  
There were two I did recognise.  
Autumn Walker was sat at the head of the table, nursing a coffee, and staring at something in her Headspace.  
Standing behind her, looming over her shoulder was a man who was tall, straight backed, square shouldered, and thin lipped, with a round, flattened face, made expressionless by the thick rimmed glasses around his shark grey eyes. His hair had thinned away a lot since I last saw him, and he was almost bald, but he was still buttoned down, and plain.  
Professor Ian ‘Mac’ McClaine.  
My adopted father.  
“Joseph,” he said, in a dry and dour tone. “Where is the girl.”  
I stared at Autumn. “There wasn’t a ransom for your daughter was there? They were watching for whoever was meant to pick her up? To take her to the Academy?”  
Autumn nodded. “Is that what they call the brain washing facility?”  
I shook my head. “You put Hessdalen in touch with me?”  
“You,” Autumn said, “are reliable, and outside the chain of command. We had no reason to believe you had been… changed.”  
McClaine stepped towards me. “Joe. Where did they take the girl?”  
“You don’t know?” I looked around.  
McClaine shrugged. “We are working on it.”  
I held up a hand. “Okay. You keep working on it. I’m going to go ask somebody who knows.”  
Loover grabbed my arm. “Does that mean you’re coming back in from the cold?”  
I stopped. I sighed. “No. It means I don’t WASP arresting me, and the Senator will get a bill.”  
  
NINE  
Masters had a lovely penthouse apartment, in one of the bigger ‘Officer Class’ tower blocks. It was clad in marble, elegantly furnished, with a high entertainment system in the lounge, and a kitchen fitted with every kind of a gadget, but never used.  
The security system was top tier.  
It was almost a shame to spike it, as I broke in.  
Almost.  
The screen of the security system flickered and died, as the malware ate out its heart. I sat on the sofa, with my gun in easy reach, and turned my attention to the flow of data circling the apartment behind the firewall.  
It took the Snoop-Suite half an hour to worm through the defences. I poured myself a bourbon, and started unthreading all of Masters’ files and contacts.  
I picked a small plastic card off the table. It looked like it might have been a pass card for any kind of business premises, if it wasn’t for the circuits embedded in the plastic, and the copper contacts along one side. It was a Transponder-Mod. You plugged it into the transponder for a vehicle, a car, or a jet, and automated defence systems didn’t target you with missiles or lasers.  
Three hours later, Masters lumbered home. He was juggling his keys, and a big bag of take-out food from the Korean place, as he stepped through the door, and hurried to the alarm point. His brow furrowed, as he prodded at the blank screen.  
I pointed my gun at him, took careful aim, then announced myself, by clearing my throat.  
Masters turned slowly. The bag of food slipped from his fingers.  
“Lysander!” He said, with forced cheer. “I thought you were…”  
“Dead?” I asked.  
He nodded.  
“Because, you sent me into a trap, Masters.”  
He held up his hands. “It wasn’t my choice.” He stared at me. “Did any of the others make it?”  
Well, there was no need to paint a target on Nosey’s back. A little white lie could suffice.  
“No,” I said, bitterly. “They killed us, and took the girl. I am a bitter wraith, a vengeful ghost.”  
Masters shook his head. “Then remain dead. Slip away. Never be seen again.”  
I stared at him.  
“Lysander,” he said, in a silky tone. “They think you are dead. Let them. Remember what I told you? There are stranger and more terrible things out there, than you can ever imagine. You do not want them to think you are their enemy.”  
“Masters,” I said, evenly, “I know there are strange and terrible things in this world. I am one of the strange and terrible things of this world. And you… you have gone and made me think you are my enemy. I’m going to need a pretty good reason not to destroy you. Can you give me a good reason not to destroy me?”  
Masters snorted a laugh. “Nice try.” He walked to the drinks cabinet and poured himself three fingers of scotch, that he mixed with ginger ale. “But you aren’t going to pull that trigger. You have it in you to kill, but you have to be made to kill. You have overcome a… code. Your quibbles.” He toasted me with his glass. “And now you owe me a dinner. I shall add it to my bill.”  
I turned my smile cold. “I didn’t say I was going to kill you. This was just to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid, while I sit here, and tell you what happens next.”  
“Oh?” He smirked. “Do tell.”  
I tapped the frame of my glasses, opening his files. “You broke a deal, and chose a side, Masters. What do you think your other clients are going to think about that? I get the impression that the Judd gang, might want to ensure their secrets were kept safe. What about Sir Humphrey? Did he strike you as the kind of man who would just cross his fingers and hope you didn’t tell your new masters where you buried the bodies?”  
Masters waved a finger at me. “Oh. Chicken is it? Well then… Let’s see who blinks first shall we, McClaine.”  
He spat my name with venom.  
I finished my drink, and set the glass aside. “You have twenty four hours. Either I know where the girl is, or your clients know you were compromised.” I rose to my feet, and walked to the door, still covering him with my gun. “Good night Masters. Or is it… goodbye?”  
He slammed the door behind me, and leant against it.  
I strolled to the elevator keeping one eye on the snoop-suite.  
He made a call before I reached the ground floor. He scrambled the call, and bounced it around the world, but I was already in his system.  
“Yes?” A distorted image on the other end of the call enquired.  
“You…” Masters seethed. “You failed. He isn’t dead. He was in my home. He was in my files!”  
“And you,” the dark, tar thick voice on the other end seethed, “you contacted me?”  
“I need help!” Masters screamed. “I need prot¬”  
“You blundering fool!” The other end of the call blinked off.  
“No!” Masters sobbed pathetically. “No!”  
I tapped out of the call, and touched my earpiece. “Did you get that?”  
“Yeah,” Loover acknowledged. “We got it.”  
“Did you trace it?” I demanded.  
“Yes,” Loover said, evenly. “I traced it. This is going to be tricky.”  
  
TEN  
The submarine plunged through the eternal night of the ocean depths.  
I stood at the eye-like viewport, at the very nose of the submarine, and watched the domes and honeycombs of Arcadia glittering against the silt-desert of the Atlantic floor.  
Loover leant forwards at the controls. “That looks pretty well lit, for an abandoned outpost, wouldn’t you say?”  
My father nodded, enlarging the image on his screen, to study. “Yes. It is… very interesting.”  
“We’re approaching the security threshold,” I warned them.  
Loover pushed the transponder modifier into his control console, and there was the pulsating hum of a signal being sent. “Let’s hope Master’s name is still on the approved list.”  
Arcadia.  
The first of the Atlantic settlements, that colonised the ocean floor. It was the platform from which the vacuum tunnels had been built, between the continents, and out to the mining colonies and new settlements.  
It had been a city built for one purpose, then cut off when it was redundant, abandoned, so it wouldn’t drain on resources, of heat, power, and drinking water, on maintenance schedules and spare parts.  
It should have been a ghost town, and uninhabitable.  
But there it was.  
“Look!” McClaine said, pointing to the smaller buildings, outside of the main domes. “Those are geothermic generators. They bore down so deep they hit lava, and pump water down, it comes back up as superheated steam, perfect for some turbines.”  
The comms channel crackled. A mechanical voice boomed: “Identify yourself.”  
McClaine put a device to his throat, and spoke into the radio set. His voice became that of Masters. “It’s me! Masters! You have to let me dock. I need sanctuary. I helped you, and because you failed to kill one meddling PI, he is burning me! My clients will think they are compromised, and will have me… murdered! Please!”  
There were several agonisingly slow minutes, before the automated voice responded. “Docking bay six.”  
Loovers adjusted our heading. “Docking bay six.” He tapped another channel. “WASP Marineville, this is Mantaray One, beginning our sweep, now.”  
We banked past the domes of the city. There had been extensive new builds, more docking ports, automated defence posts, whose torpedo turrets tracked us. Missile silos spread out across the ocean floor.  
Loovers swore under his breath.  
McCaine shook his head. “I don’t recognise the design, but those warheads look like they are built to contain gas, or biological components, not explosives.”  
“Step four,” I whispered. “Restore order. When Britain has fallen into chaos, they beat it into submission, and use force of arms to take over.”  
Loovers shook his head. “Plague bombs and nerve gas are one way to bring a population to their knees.”  
McCaine grimaced. “Well, that’s it then. We can’t let those missiles launch.”  
“We won’t,” Loovers assured him. “WASP Marineville. Target confirmed. Start the count.”  
I checked the load on my pistol, clicked the silencer into place, and holstered it under my jacket.  
My father sighed. “Joe…”  
“I know,” I said, without looking around. “The WASP strike happens in fifteen minutes, if I’m back on the ship or not. And… you can’t wait for me. Don’t.”  
A fifteen minute countdown was blinking away in the corner of my vision, the seconds ticking away.  
The truth was, as soon as they saw I wasn’t Masters, I was compromised. My chances of reaching Penelope, of finding her, were slim.  
That was better than none.  
My father sighed. “Actually… I was going to say you look… different.”  
I glanced over my shoulder and smiled. “Less precocious?”  
He didn’t laugh. “You didn’t have to run, or hide, or…” He remembered to take the device from his throat. “Was I so terrible you stopped caring?”  
“Stopped?” I turned slowly to face him. “Did it ever occur to you, that I had to run away precisely because I cared? Because I didn’t want to see the last person I cared about hurt?”  
He cocked his head. “You should have known me better than that.”  
“Perhaps,” I agreed. “Or perhaps you were the merciless little git who adopted a kid and experimented on him. Perhaps you tinkered with my brain to make me a cold killer, and stopped me thinking about the cost of that for… years.” I rubbed my head. “You were my father. The person If you were the person I wanted to believe you were, then you deserved better than my second guessing. You shouldn’t have to see me fall apart and convince myself you were a monster.” I shuddered at a memory. “But…”  
McCaine put a hand on my shoulder. “You were never just an experiment.”  
The journey to the docking station took precious minutes.   
I hopped down to the airlock, my pistol in my hand.  
The clang of the airlocks engaging echoed through the submarine.  
McCaine looked at me. Maybe for the last time. He gave me a curt nod.  
I smiled back, and let my accent stray back to a slightly twee, Public School English. “I’m nipping out. Anybody want anything from the shops? Couple of lattes and a cheeky Mars bar?”  
McCaine nodded. “Bring her home.”  
*  
I stepped out of the airlock into Arcadia.  
There were two men, in dark fatigues, waiting for me, each armed with combat shotguns. They were men I had met at the station, and were still wearing their bruises. Their stances snapped to combat ready, and they brought up their shotguns, their fingers squeezing the triggers.  
I ducked back into the airlock, as shotgun blasts sparked against the door frame.  
“It’s not him!” One barked. “It’s the Freelancer!”  
I steadied my breath, and hushed the babble in my head. “I don’t suppose you want to resolve this reasonably?”  
Another pair of shotgun blasts sparked on the airlock doors.  
Garrow snorted in my mind. “That’s a no, then. Right. You know the drill?”  
I stepped out of the airlock, already firing, and kept firing as I moved on. Two short for every step. Two shots to each of their chest. Two shots to each of their heads.  
The goons went down.  
I stepped over them and kept moving, tapping into the data as I went. The Snoop-Suite ferreted out the security protocols that suggested cells, in a prison wing. One was in use. That seemed a good place to start.  
Another of the militiamen lurked at a corner.  
I crouched, and pressed myself to the wall. I waited for him to duck out, and take aim.  
Two pulls of the trigger, and he was falling aside, a dead weight. I popped out my magazine, and reloaded, in a movement that still came naturally.  
There was movement to my side. A guard in a side room, reaching for her gun.  
She didn’t make it.  
I checked the side room, and moved on, taking the next junction, and hurrying for the stairs. At the bottom, I glanced around the corner, and stepped out. I hurried down the steps to the doorway, and glanced into the prison section. The cells were the old pressure chambers, from Arcadia’s operational days.  
There was a man watching the cells from a desk. Or one of the cells.  
I’d seen his pictures before. Lord Richard Creighton-Ward was tall, and an interesting kind of handsome, slightly dashing, slightly poetic, and every bit as handsome as his daughter was beautiful.  
He spun on his toes to face me, down the barrel of his own gun. “Halt! Step out! Let me see you!”  
I stepped through the doorway.  
Creighton-Ward gestured with his gun. “Drop it! Come on! Be a good chap!”  
“You,” I said slowly, “should have shot me on sight.”  
He nodded. “Those are my orders.”  
His finger wasn’t taking the slack from the trigger. He was looking me in the eye.  
“It doesn’t come natural to you, does it?” I asked. “Whatever they did to you, it doesn’t reach so deep it can make you pull that trigger.” I stepped forwards. “Are you going to shoot me?”  
“I have my orders!” He warned.  
“Then why not?” I asked.  
“You…” His voice softened. “You can join us. If you look in his eyes, if you learn to obey him, you can understand. You can see this is right. You can…see clearly. The world needs strong leadership. The world needs… guidance.”  
“Whose eyes?” I asked, evenly. “Who will rule us?”  
Creighton-Ward’s gun lowered. He stared without seeing. “I… don’t remember. I only remember his eyes. Those burning gold eyes…” Tears rolled down his cheeks. “I don’t want to kill you, but I have to. I…have…”  
I grabbed his gun, and whipped my gun across his face. His eyes rolled into his skull, as he fell to the floor.  
I stepped over him, and opened the cell.  
Penelope was curled in the corner, huddled with her chin on her knees. Her eyes opened wide.  
“Hey,” I said. “This place is going to Hell in a few minutes, and your dad looks really heavy. Want to give me a hand?”  
She nodded.  
Speakers crackled somewhere in the ceiling. A voice, the same voice Masters had communicated with, spoke: “And where do you think you can run, Joseph McClaine, that I can not find you?”  
“And do what?” I asked. “In a few minutes this base, and all your weapons, will be scorched to nothing. Your plans for Britain are over.”  
“Perhaps,” the Voice said. “Or perhaps these are not all my weapons. Perhaps when this plan falls, there will be another. Perhaps I will not cede my claim on this world so easily. I will not be defeated. I will not be destroyed. I am patient. I am waiting. There will be other chances, other games, other pawns to be moved.” It paused. “The day is coming that the world you know will fall. The day will come, that you will understand the need for a leader who has the strength to do what is needed, no matter the cost. That you will understand the need for such… vision.”  
“No matter the cost?” I whispered. “Have you seen the cost? Have you seen what those missiles do? Have you stood in an empty city and tasted death on the air?” Bile burned my throat. “Have you tasted the stench of genocide?” I shook my head. “If you that is your vision, or worse, a means to your vision, then what you offer is…madness, that deserves to be obliterated.”  
The floor shook beneath my feet. A distant explosion rumbled and echoed about us.  
The WASP strikes on the missile solos.  
“Time to go,” I said, stepping out the cell, and hefting Creighton-Ward over my shoulder.  
Penelope followed me, as we ran for our lives. Most the militia men were fleeing to their vehicle platforms. One or two still put up a fight. I fired off a few pot shots as we ran, driving them to cover as we fled for our lives.  
The explosions were getting closer, shaking the city, and making the metal buttresses and girders groan and wail in complaint.  
I skidded around the corner to the docking platform.  
The submarine was still there.  
I threw Penny ahead of me, and dragged her father into the airlock.  
“Hold on!” Loover warned. “This will be bumpy!”  
The airlock released and we banked sharply, as he accelerated hard away from the city, past the swarming silver and blue submarines in WASP livery, spitting torpedoes into the silos and power plants.  
The city imploded, consumed by a chain reaction of ice white flashes and explosions.  
The shockwaves rattled and jostled at the submarine, rattling our bones, and tumbling us about.  
Loover threw his full weight behind the controls, pulling onto an even keel. “Are we all okay?”  
“His eyes…” Creighton-Ward whispered. “I had to do it. Had to. His eyes…”  
My father eased Creighton-Ward onto a bench, and plucked a sedative from the first aid kit.  
Penelope sat beside him, and took his hand.  
  
EPILOGUE  
A blustery morning in New York.  
I strolled through Central Park, holding a coffee between my cold fingers, and joined the Senator Autumn Walker on the park bench.  
She was staring ahead, over the trees to the sail shaped super-towers. “Good morning mister…What is it now?”  
“Falstaff,” I said, evenly. “I thought that it might be wise to let Joseph Lysander die in Arcadia.”  
“Falstaff,” Autumn said. She smiled. “I always liked Falstaff.” She looked at me. “So… I notice that the Creighton-Ward family have a new chauffer and valet?”  
“Yes.” I smiled. “Somebody to keep an eye on young Lady P. And her father of course.”  
Autumn nodded. “Good. If he ever starts acting oddly, they can call me.”  
“Nosey always acts oddly.”  
Autumn glared at me. “I meant Lord Richard.” She gave me an appraising look. “You are building a new life. You’ll be looking for somewhere new to live. A new house, a new office, a new cover business?”  
“I was thinking Paris.”  
“I was thinking Washington.” She took a bundle of files from her satchel. “WIN was too damaged, too compromised. I need to build something new, and I need somebody to vet the candidates.”  
“Lieutenant Colonel Robert Snow?” I asked. “Army Intellingence Corps.”  
Autumn nodded.  
“Lieutenant Commander Conrad Lefkon Turner,” I said, “WASP tactical officer.” I flicked to the next file. “Colonel Jeff Tracy? The astronaut? And…what exactly are you building, Autumn?”  
“We face new threats, that we are only just beginning to understand,” Autumn said, quietly. “We need a new kind of security agency. Somebody to watch over us, and to look for the patterns in the chaos. Somebody to consider the full spectrum of possibilities. Including the impossible. To be ready for them.”  
I drummed my fingers on the files.  
In the back of my mind, Juliet lay her hand on my cheek. “Nice safe, simple work. Maybe its time to join the respectable set?”  
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll do some digging.”  
“Excellent.” Autumn smiled at me. “Do you happen to have a favourite colour, Mister Falstaff?”


End file.
